There is a place between the intellect and the heart–a fence, as it were, that divides the greener sides of faith and truth. There are those who would have us believe that our feelings justify our faith, that if something feels right then it must be right; and there are those who would have us test everything, defend everything, rationalize everything we claim as true. I think maybe both have valid points (and I’ve certainly claimed both at different times in my life). But I think there’s a compromise between the two.

I think there must be. If something could only be called “true” if we were able to absolutely prove it beyond question, then we would never believe anything. And conversely, if something could be called “true” by the mere emotion we feel, we would believe anything. The two must balance each other.

But there’s something more. There is something deeper than our brains and our hearts. I’m not sure what it is–kidneys, perhaps?

Last night, after a long and difficult day, I stood on the back deck, breathing deep of the cool Autumn air and gazing upon the starry host that God has given us. Sometimes when I’m silent, I think I can hear them declaring God’s glory. And it reminds me how small I am. How insignificant. Just a speck of dust in this great existence God has called into being.

And it humbles me. It brings low the importance of both my intellect and my emotions. It brings low my pride in thinking that I might claim to “know” anything about the Keeper of the Worlds. What can man truly know? What can man truly comprehend of a God who is altogether separate from everything else we can know?

And in spite of our tiny-ness, our inability to rightly comprehend Him or serve Him, He has given the full measure of His love for us. Not only has He loved us, but He has loved us with an everlasting love, and set us just a little lower than the heavenly beings. He has crowned us with glory and honor.

What is man that He is mindful of us?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

Psalm 8:3-5, ESV

Perhaps we try too hard to justify what God speaks to our souls. Perhaps the question is not whether we can prove a thing, or whether it feels right; rather, perhaps the question is whether we can recognize the stillness of God’s voice as He speaks to us through shooting stars and Saturn and the Milky Way. And when He does–will we accept it, deep within us, where neither knowledge nor emotion are valid proofs?